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Keep being asked for your iCloud password?

There is a teeny tiny bug in OS X and iOS that more than a few people have come across and it is related to iCloud. Everything can be running smoothly on your Apple Mac, iPhone or iPad when suddenly you are asked to enter your iCloud password to log in. People with Macs, iPads and iPhones have all suffered from this, but there is a solution.

When it first happened to me, I dismissed the prompt because it had never occurred before, so why should it suddenly appear now? Besides, I’m always very suspicious of pop-ups asking for login details for sites and services. It could be malware, but wait a minute, this is a Mac and Macs don’t get malware right? (Actually they do, but it is a great deal more rare than with Windows.)

I went to the Apple menu, System Preferences, and opened iCloud and everything looked fine. I was logged in to the service OK and so it was a puzzle why I should be asked to sign in again.

The next time it occurred, I got an iCloud sign in pop-up message on the screen for every single app on the Mac that uses iCloud, such as Mail, Calendar, Reminders, Notes, FaceTime, Calendar and so on. I dismissed them all and despite the messages, I had no problems using the apps or iCloud. Then the single sign in returned.

It turns out that there are quite a few other people with a similar problem and it seems that iCloud sometimes gets in a bit of a muddle with your account. It needs clearing out and restarting.

The solution is to go to System Preferences, iCloud and clear all the ticks so that you are no longer syncing anything to iCloud. You should also go into every Apple app (FaceTime, Calendar, Messages, iTunes, Reminders, Notes and any other app you can think of), check the preferences in each app and if you are signed in to iCloud then sign out.

After disabling all the iCloud sync options in System Preferences and every single Apple app, return to iCloud in System Preferences and tick all the boxes again to start syncing once more. You might also need to sign in again with FaceTime and the other apps you signed out of. I don’t think you need to restart the Mac, but try it if you still have problems.

The iPhone and iPad are similar. In fact, you might need to sign out everywhere on the Mac and the iPhone and iPad at the same time. Go to Settings and select iCloud. Turn off all the options. Go into the settings for every Apple app like Mail, FaceTime, Calendar, Reminders and so on, and make sure you are signed out of iCloud. When you have signed out everywhere you can think of, turn all the sync options back on and sign in everywhere you signed out.

After signing out everywhere, possibly rebooting, and signing back in, you should now find that the iCloud sign-in problem has gone away and the prompts no longer appear on the screen.

Comments

Hi. I have the same problem since iOS 9.3 (all versions so far), and signing out of iCloud and signing back in on th iPhone changed 2 things for me: FindmyiPhone is switched off with yet another password dialog (this makes sense); iCloud sync is then turned on by default after login (this does not make sense); iCloud iDrive app wants to take a spot on the home screen, and in my case even dumped a 3rdparty app into some invisible garbage can to take its place. The app in case was acessible through the App Store app on the phone, and also was still visible in iTunes on my mac, but I had to do all kinds of things in iTunes to see it on my iPhone again. (iCloud is not activated or logged in on my mac w/Mavericks.) Also, I never wanted to sync iCloud anyway, I just use it for the FindmyiPhone function.
All I can say is: I just hope it will not bother me again!

I don't use iCloud, but keep getting those prompts to log in since I upgraded to Sierra. I've tried the fix, but the computer won't let me log into iCloud once I've input my Apple ID, just spins endlessly until I have to force quit System Preferences. BTW, I don't have an iCloud account, but still suffer from the prompts every time I turn my Macbook Air on. Any suggestions

Thanks for this fix! I've been putting up with this bug for two years on both my computers! What i failed to do the first time trying to fix this was to sign out of iCloud on all my devices at the same time, including my iPhone. Great job.